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First-Year Seminar: Common Text

Each year, Saint Michael's College chooses a common text to be read and discussed by the incoming class of new students. All first-year students are asked to read the book over the summer prior to arriving on campus. A panel discussion of the book is held during Orientation in late August, and each First-Year Seminar discusses the book at the start of the fall and spring semesters.

The First-Year Seminar Common Text for 2017-2018 is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015). Coates's essay and memoir is an eloquent, forceful text that will provide students, faculty, and staff with much to reflect upon and discuss. The book confronts head on long-standing issues of race in America that have been highly visible and deeply fraught over the last year in national politics, in the media, and in the lives of many across the county. By reading and discussing Coates's work, students and faculty will also be directly engaged in the FYS program's efforts to promote reflection on diversity.

Reading this book will be your first step into the conversation that is a liberal arts education. To help you enter that conversation, your first-year seminar instructor will ask you to write a response to the book; you should watch your SMC email and home postal mail in early August for your summer writing assignment, due the first week of classes. (Students in spring seminars will get their letters over the winter break, but should still read the book over the summer.)

Additionally, essays by three faculty responding to the book will be posted on the SMC portal by the end of July. You will receive an email informing you when they are available. During Fall Orientation you’ll participate in a panel discussion with these faculty, so your instructor will likely ask you to also read their essays and perhaps incorporate responses to them into your own essay.

Please buy the book as soon as possible, either at your local bookstore or online. Some copies will be available all summer at the campus bookstore, so if you’re on campus, you can also buy it there. But don’t delay; read the book soon so that you can jump into the conversation that is at the core of a liberal arts education.

For more information, contact:Peter Vantine
Director, First-Year Seminar Program
Associate Professor of Modern Languages